How beautiful the weather is in Spain. While France’s deficit and public debt are in pole position to reach 6% and 115% of GDP respectively in 2025, Madrid promises to keep its deficit below 3% and contain its debt to 103% of GDP. Even more spectacular, where the average of the Eurozone countries shows growth rates of less than 1%, the one that we now call “the Florida of Europe” should close the year with growth of 2.6% of its GDP – after a jump of 3.2% in 2024. The weather has also cleared up for Spanish households, who have seen the minimum wage increase by 61% since the coming to power of the socialist Pedro Sanchez in 2018, compared to only 18% in France.
So many figures which, beyond the Pyrenees, support the argument of Olivier Faure boasting about the supposed benefits of a socialist economic policy, with results to back it up. The Spanish Prime Minister is also (very) often held up as a model by the leader of the Socialist Party and his supporters. Except that for Alban Magro, civil service economist and researcher associated with the liberal think tank Thomas More, the Spanish economic miracle owes absolutely nothing to socialism. Quite the contrary… Interview.
The good economic health of Spain, led by the left, seems to have become for the PS, the unstoppable demonstration that a socialist policy can make a modern economy prosper. A fallacious rhetoric according to you. Explain to us.
This reading is fallacious because it confuses political label and policy actually carried out. Spain is doing better, but not thanks to an enchanted socialism: it is doing better because it has accepted reality. Contrary to what Olivier Faure wants you to believe, the Spanish miracle is not socialist. Behind the good figures, we find very un-French-style ingredients, including much lower public spending (around 45% of GDP, well below the French 57%) or even a pension reform assumed until age 67. This is not exactly the dream catalog of the French Socialist Party, especially in the current political debate.
Then, we must add an essential nuance: the Spanish success can also be explained by a catch-up effect. The country suffered one of the most severe recessions in the EU in 2020 (-10.8% of GDP), in particular because tourism represents almost 15% of its economy. When activity restarts, it is mechanically easier to display higher growth. This post-Covid rebound, in addition to being added to an earlier catch-up, following the 2008 crisis, is also explained by massive investments financed by European recovery funds, of which Spain is one of the main beneficiaries. Recognizing these factors does not take away from the efforts made, it simply avoids transforming a dynamic of statistical catch-up into an ideological miracle.
Is Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE less “socialist” than the French Pink House? To hear Olivier Faure, there seems to be only the thickness of a sheet of cigarette paper between the two parties…
On paper, the two look similar. In practice, the PSOE governs with the calculator on. The French PS proclaims a social discourse, then allies itself with LFI which defends a totally unrealistic budgetary program. This is the part where the trailer promises a movie that the budget can’t make. The PSOE assumes the budgetary constraint. The PS prefers to comment on it. The label may be similar, but the software is not at all the same.
While Olivier Faure fought to obtain the suspension of the pension reform raising the retirement age to 64, on the other side of the Pyrenees, the Spaniards retire at 67. If the PSOE is not necessarily less socialist than the PS, is it not at least more pragmatic?
Yes, and above all more coherent. Spanish socialists have admitted a simple principle: an aging country must work a little longer to finance its social model. It’s arithmetic. In France, there have been cries of “ultra-liberalism” for 64-year-olds, while Spain is moving towards 67 without psychodrama. This is proof that the nouns “right” or “left” no longer mean much without looking at the actions.
This can be explained by a difference in political culture. Spain went through a significant crisis after 2008 and was subject to strong demands from Europe and its institutions: it knows that reality always ends up calling the shots. France continues to believe that the debate stops at the logo on the poster. We sometimes hear in the same mouth that Emmanuel Macron is an ultra-liberal” and Pedro Sanchez a “socialist”, but when one makes reforms that the other suspends, this reading becomes intellectually lazy.
Thanks to pragmatic and rigorous budgetary policies, does Spain today have the means to pursue a “socialist” policy, where France, dragging its public deficit like a ball and chain which is close to 6% of GDP, no longer has them?
That’s exactly it. Spain has margins because it first cleaned up its finances. France first promises and then looks for how to finance it. A generous social policy is only based on credible accounts. Spain can increase its minimum wage by 60% in six years, raise certain pensions and invest because it played the game in the right order, notably by reducing its deficit from 6.7% to 2.8% in five years. With a deficit forecast at 5.8% in 2025, France is playing in reverse: it spends first and then is surprised by the bill.
Even if France managed to redress its financial situation, would a left-wing PSOE-style policy really be appropriate, as Olivier Faure insists?
Possibly, but only if France accepts the same logic as Spain: first restore competitiveness, employment, the sustainability of pensions and productive investment; then, only, use the margins created to finance social policies. The debate is not about “more or less left”, but about the ability to govern under constraint. The PSOE is able to distribute, not because it is more socialist but because it has done its homework first. Social justice, without budgetary seriousness, is only a promise on credit.
While across Europe, most leftists have changed their discourse on security and immigration, the French and Spanish lefts are exceptions. If the first is criticized for its blindness to sovereign issues, how can we explain that the second escapes this criticism?
Even if the Spanish left is not particularly offensive on sovereign issues, it governs in a country confronted with more concrete security realities, notably three points of significant migratory pressure – the Canaries, Ceuta, Melilla – which impose arbitrations. This forges a less naive political culture, even if the discourse remains moderate. In France, part of the left is perceived as moralist and opposed to the police tools proposed by its adversaries, which feeds the image of blindness. In Spain, reality does part of the work: migratory flows force the administration to make concrete decisions, sometimes far from the main principles. We cannot manage the arrival of hundreds of people per day in specific places with slogans or petitions. We manage with police officers, coast guards and diplomatic agreements. This proximity to security reality makes the debate less theoretical and naturally defuses criticism. When citizens see that the State is acting, even discreetly, the controversy dies down by itself.
Administrative gender change possible from the age of 16, cultural reform with a “decolonial” dimension, support for pro-Palestinian demonstrations, recognition of Palestine… The PSOE seems closer to the woke left than the PS is in France. Is this the case?
On cultural issues, yes, the PSOE has made very visible symbolic gestures that speak to its electorate. But this should not mask the essential: he has never sacrificed budgetary sustainability or economic coherence for these positions. Its hierarchy of priorities remains clear: first the balance of accounts, then the cultural agenda. In France, part of the left has often done the opposite, concentrating disproportionate energy on identity debates while reducing attention to debt, public spending or the effectiveness of social action. This asymmetry largely explains why the PSOE governs within a credible budgetary framework, where the PS sometimes nourishes the image of a left more concerned with posture than with the sustainability of its choices.
By going into these areas, has the PSOE marginalized the far-left Podemos movement? Should the PS do the same with LFI?
The PSOE has absorbed the cultural facade of the radical left, while neutralizing its economic danger. Result: Podemos has emptied itself of its substance. In France, the PS did the opposite: it subcontracted its economic narrative to LFI, getting stuck in an unrealistic angle. If it wants to marginalize LFI, the PS must regain its economic backbone. We do not beat utopia with more utopia, but with results and reality.
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